In a deeper sense, her public identity had also changed. During her free period at school, she roamed the halls looking for teachers who might be willing to chat. These stories attract attention, in part because they offer comfort that, at least on occasion, such things happen. She interviewed Drivers classmates about what had happened to him, and she and another student, Kate Schneider, took photographs of the buildings entryways. Mackenzie Fierceton didnt It was a pretty emotional conversation, because of her fear that, if she did get the scholarship, there would be press, and her bio family could find her and tear her down, Cannon said. Mackenzie went to Whitfield, a private prep school in St. Louis, where the schools wellness director, Ginny Fendell, called her the queen of compartmentalization. She got As, served in student government, played varsity soccer, managed the field-hockey team, and volunteered for the Special Olympics. Morrison and White spoke on the phone. She wrote that Mackenzie, in her application, had failed to acknowledge her upper middle-class upbringing and provides a description of a life of abuse that the judicial process concluded could not be substantiated. Winkelstein attached orders showing that a circuit court had reversed the D.S.S.s finding of abuse, and that Morrisons arrest had been expunged. The two flew to Fort Worth, where they picked it up. During conversations with her mother in the kitchen, she made sure to keep the kitchen island in between us, while also bracing for impact. She thought about running away, but she didnt have anywhere to go. What happened after that? Winkelstein asked. She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.. Nevertheless, strange packages were occasionally delivered to her dorm: a pair of sneakers, which she assumed came from Lovelace, who used to act as her personal trainer, helping her stretch; a bracelet with an inscription about finding the truth. According to Mackenzie, Logan, who had been pregnant when her husband died, asked her to meet. The secret benefactor turned out, of course, to be Ms. Scott. Scott was her grandfather. Classmates at Hotchkiss said they remembered Ms. Scott as disciplined about her work, gentle with others and humble in her manner. You never know where its going to end up. Professional career. They learned that, the previous day, the history teacher had called Missouris Child Abuse and Neglect hotline, because Mackenzie had revealed details to her about being sexually abused by Lovelace. According to the Palm Beach Daily News, the radio host Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News personality Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter were all in attendance, as was Roger Ailess widow, Liz. It quickly became clear, he said, that this was a very unusual process, and my knowledge of standard disciplinary processes was of limited relevance. O.S.C. Penn seemed to embrace Mackenzies story as evidence of its commitment to promoting social and economic mobility. What HBOs Chernobyl got right, and what it got terribly wrong. According to Brandts report, Morrison replied, Well I guess either she did this to herself or someone broke in and did it to her. Morrison also said that, the night before, she had helped Mackenzie get gum out of her hair; they had been at the top of the staircase, and Mackenzie had fallen two steps but had not been hurt. I dont remember, but I was told I drove, Mackenzie said. Mr. Jewett posted his own letter on Ms. Scotts Giving Pledge page. Years later Ms. Scott would thank him in the acknowledgments of her first published book. She just bursts out laughing, Mackenzie wrote. Norton and her partner, Deborah Harrold, live in a large house in northwest Philadelphia. Ms. Scott made cold calls and assembled an informal group of advisers. She was abused, but there is not enough blood. Penn had once celebrated her story, but, when it proved more complex than institutional categories for disadvantage could capture, it seemed to quickly disown her. The one that I feared most. She didnt elaborate on the thought, because, she added, Im literally getting nauseous thinking about it., [Support The New Yorkers award-winning journalism. When we allow stereotype to be our stand-in for disadvantaged groups, we are actually doing them a disservice, he said. It can also be read as a summary of her philosophy. studentan abbreviation that may invite confusion, because it can refer to people who are either low-income or first-generation, not necessarily both. The Lakeside School in Seattle, where Dan Jewett, Ms. Scotts new husband, used to teach. He edited what was my first and, happily, last piece of financial marketing literature, and after our wedding I started working full time on a novel, she wrote to Ms. Morrison of that period. That morning, Brandt and an investigator with the Department of Social Services (D.S.S.) A spokesperson for his office said that new evidence had been uncovered. A friend from Hotchkiss, Margot Bass, described her as original in everything from how she dressed eschewing the Laura Ashley prints many women wore on campus to how she saw the world. Records show that Mr. Tuttle made a small contribution $25 to the Ron DeSantis campaign for Florida governor that year, while Mr. and Ms. Tuttle had each previously contributed $500 to the Republican National Committee. She gave overwhelmingly to groups led by women, people of color, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. After Morrisons arrest, St.Lukes announced that it no longer employed her, but within a year she had been granted privileges by another local hospital. We want to salute our veterans and show them the respect and gratitude that they deserve, Ms. Tuttle told the Palm Beach Daily News, four years after the bankruptcy filing. Why one chapter of the Y.M.C.A. Ms. Tuttle has been actively involved in a womens group associated with St. Edwards Roman Catholic Church, where the Kennedy family was once known to attend Mass, and Mr. Tuttle has served on the board of directors for the couples condominium association in a gated community with a golf course in West Palm Beach. A few days later, Mackenzie received an e-mail asking her to meet with Winkelstein, the deputy provost, to address questions that had arisen from an anonymous source. Sensing her mothers involvement, Mackenzie asked a university staff member to attend the meeting as her informal adviser. Her own life has taken sharp turns that have shaped her choices, including her extraordinary leap into philanthropy, which in under three years has exceeded $12 billion in grants. But her mother and Wendy White apparently stayed in touchin an e-mail after Mackenzie was questioned, Morrison said that she was saddened to learn that M stuck to her story. She wrote, She has become emboldened over time, and has been successful with her evolving tale for 6 yrs. She offered that White or her staff could visit her home, in St. Louis. The Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted the Inquirer article, saying it was thrilling that a Rhodes Scholarship had gone to a first-gen low-income foster youth, and Mackenzie retweeted what he wrote. One question on the application asked, Are you the first generation in your family to attend college? The Web site of Penn First Plus, a university program founded in 2018 to support F.G.L.I. I wish that I had the courage to tell someone. A month after beginning the journal, Mackenzie came to school with a black eye. Norton said, Mackenzie always tried to say, Im fine, Im fineafter she and her roommates gave up their apartment off campus, she lived with a roommates family in Ohio and then stayed at a classmates home in Philadelphiabut eventually it became clear she was just couch-surfing at friends houses, and you cant couch-surf in a pandemic. In late May, Norton invited Mackenzie, who had just graduated with a B.A. I really dont have words, Mackenzie wrote in an e-mail to a mentor at the Penn Womens Center. Following that, her scholarship was forfeited and she lost her place in school. CreditIllustration by Israel G. Vargas; Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic. Three days after the Inquirer story was published, Morrison wrote White an e-mail, thanking her for the conversation and explaining that Mackenzie has been loved and cherished every moment of her life. She said that when Mackenzie implodedat the time of her hospitalizationshe had just failed the first AP Chem test and was overwhelmed with work load in other classes. (Mackenzie said she didnt fail any chemistry tests; her transcript shows that she earned a B-plus in the class.) Like the child riffling through the botany book for plant species, she reached out to a plumber to understand her protagonists home repairs and spent time with an engineer to grasp the details of his work building dams. My own reflection after recent events revealed a dividend of privilege Id been overlooking: the attention I can call to organizations and leaders driving change, she said, in her first public catalog of her giving. Sherry McLain, a nurse assigned to her, told me, She had two black eyes, and her hair was full of blood. When Mackenzie returned to school, she learned that her mother had hired William Margulis, who had sent four children to Whitfield and later served on the schools board of trustees, as her defense attorney. When she visited friends and former teachers, she tried to take up as little space as possible. The acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison was Ms. Scotts mentor at Princeton University. One student died, and another could have died, because of issues of access in this basement. Mackenzie wrote letters to the social-work school and to Gutmann, the universitys president, expressing her concerns. However, an anonymous father reported that she belonged to a rich family and an investigation was put upon her. Im telling my story because I think its a microcosm of how institutions of power can manipulate truth, she told me. In a psychological evaluation administered by the D.S.S., she was asked to share anything about her life that she wanted others to understand. She petitioned a circuit court in St. Louis to remove her from the registry, arguing that the boards finding was based on insufficient evidence and would compromise her employment. The two friends painted, with Ms. Scott producing a memorable portrait of her younger brother. White, upper middle class, and in a position of power, Mackenzies mother was demographically dissimilar to most parents who come to the agencys attention. But she said that Mackenzie concluded, Im going to continue to try to move forward in my life., In a form that Mackenzie submitted to Penn, which formally nominates students for the Rhodes, she described her sense that students applying for scholarships sometimes felt confused and pressured to be someone they were not amidst their application process. In an interview with a writer working on a guidebook for F.G.L.I. Then, like Princetonians at least as far back as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ms. Scott moved to New York City to pursue a career as a novelist. Fiercetons mother denied the account and said the teen had accidentally gone down two or three steps while Morrison was helping remove gum from her hair. Raffaele was reminded of a line in the space movie Serenity, in which an agent called the Operative advises that, in order to trap a rival, one should leave no ground to go to. Raffaele said it seemed as if Morrison were trying to manufacture a situation in which Mackenzie must go home to her mother, because she has no ground to go toif shes personally ruined., Mackenzies lawyers learned that the university was considering initiating a process in which Mackenzies bachelors degree could be revoked. In the winter of her sophomore year of high school, Mackenzie Morrison sat in her bedroom closet and began a new diary. She said, You know meI would never hurt my beautiful girl. Her complaint described another Penn studentMackenziewhose medical crisis in the Caster Building had exposed nearly identical problems. She explained she was helping her daughter remove gum from hair when There was commonality in the fact that a lot of us had different relationships with home or family. When she got into Penn, she said, I had never heard of F.G.L.I., but these labels resonated with a story I was still trying to process., Mackenzie was one of fifteen freshmen selected for Penns Civic Scholars, a program for students committed to social justice and community service. Couldnt wait to hop in the car.. Well, you could tell them apart, right?. When you are in foster care, your legal guardian is the state, Mackenzie responded, according to the reconstruction. We argued about the case, I advised him that this was ridiculous, and this had to be a status thing. A few weeks later, the prosecuting attorney decided not to press charges against Lovelace, either, citing a lack of evidence. Before leaving, the caseworker, who was white, explained that she didnt really need anything else from us and she was sorry to bother us, but was glad everything worked out, Mackenzie wrote. In an interview, she described how she, too, had been a first-generation, low-income student.. It just seems like, if nothing else, Mackenzie's father might have been able to corroborate her story because Cindy may very well have been abusive to him too. Mackenzies friend Kate Minorini told me, Mackenzies mom was using the Whitfield buzz bookthe school directoryto plead her case, so the rumor mill would have happened regardless, but a lot of the hearsay seemed to be based off the defense arguments of our classmates dad. There were rumors that Mackenzies bruises were self-inflicted, that she had thrown herself down the stairs to get attention. She was tirelessshe seemed to be fighting the worlds fight and really engaged in the struggle for a more just world, he said. The father of one of Mackenzies high-school peers reached out to a Penn official, to explain that the news coverage about Mackenzie was inaccurate. Three decades after worrying about making rent, she is now giving away billions all while trying to keep herself out of the spotlight. Friends remembered the couple as fun loving, big on books but also other forms of culture. Birthplace: Ness, Isle of Lewis, United Kingdom. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's glowing recommendation of MacKenzie Scott secured the writer a job working with her now-former husband, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Princeton classmates recalled her as passionate about books and deeply engaged in her studies. She started writing a journal about her life with her mother and her boyfriend, Join Facebook to connect with Mackenzie Morrison and others you may know. WebJames McKenzie Morrison (born July 18, 1990) is an American professional boxer. In keeping with the absolute secrecy surrounding Lost Horses operations, there is no nameplate in the lobby and the slim rectangular window on the Lost Horse floor is papered over. Mackenzie is making this all up. After she was released, her classmates told her how long they believed she had waited for medical care. Mackenzie said that Penn First was one of the first spaces on campus where I felt, These are my people. Rachel Webb, one of Mackenzies teachers from elementary school, said that Morrison left a message on her voice mail. Oh Luther, Liz answers. Fendell told her that, if she couldnt talk about why she was injured, she should write it down. She said it felt like an attack on a student. Licht was disturbed that the conversation appeared to have been provoked by a mother possibly seeking vengeance. (The university has said that Winkelsteins questions were appropriate and that her manner was not aggressive. Mr. Bezos and Ms. Scott in 2018, the year before the couple divorced. As Mackenzie recovered, a friend, Ayah El-Fahmawi, stayed with her and made her food. Mackenzie is living proof of the parent coaching style in the book. It was, like, Oh, yay, Penn has a Black Rhodes Scholar with dead parents who grew up working class. (Penn says that Moore was never made to do an interview or told what to say.) The following year they gave $2.5 million in support of a same-sex marriage referendum. Smith was hoping that the panellists would consider how Penns F.G.L.I. In a No matter how hard powerful institutions and people try to manipulate it, it stays the same. She settled into a routine balancing work and writing. investigators were reviewing e-mails between Mackenzie and Penn faculty, presumably to see if she had portrayed her life accurately; they also interviewed Morrison and the St. Louis prosecutor who dropped her criminal casewithout telling Mackenzie. You should know that I dont feel I got there, she wrote to Ms. Morrison in 2000. The story was quickly picked up by other news outlets. While Mackenzie was in the hospital, Morrison was released on bond, and she began calling people close to Mackenzie to tell her side of the story. had considered placing her with one of Morrisons sisters, but the Whitfield principal had called the D.S.S. Bet the daughter is an entitled brat, one said. He is the son of the late boxer, Tommy Morrison. Ad Choices. He was not able to provide a direct answer, she later wrote. And this next question may be tough. It was shortly thereafter that the couple entered the rarest lore of high-tech start-ups. Like Ms. Scott, he got divorced in 2019. According to her classmates, she was unconscious and intermittently seizing for roughly an hour, because it took emergency medical personnel that long to extract her from the building, as they struggled to fit a stretcher into the elevator or the stairway. She was., Mackenzie was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania with a full scholarship, facilitated by QuestBridge. The D.S.S. (Her doctors said that her head injuries in high school may have put her at greater risk for the disorder.) Parents and teachers from Whitfield gave her new clothes and school supplies. In talking about her childhood, Mackenzie was fragile, sometimes narrowly avoiding tears, but when she reflected on how her life intersected with her political ideals she became focussed and self-possessed. In August, 2020, Logan filed a lawsuit, asserting that her husbands death was owing to system-wide logistical and structural failures created by the negligence and recklessness of the university. He was asked to run a fund-raising campaign at Seattles prestigious Lakeside School, where he taught and which seeks donations from the moderately paid faculty and staff members to a school with assets of $325 million and multiple billionaires in its tightknit community. and not another? That same year, her mother made headlines in the local papers fighting to save neighborhood trees threatened by Dutch elm disease. I was young, and I didnt know how you support somebody whose family is going through a hard time.. She had pledged to give until the safe is empty but her remaining Amazon shares were worth more than at the time of the divorce, the result of a soaring market that fueled further debate over billionaires and income inequality. Eventually, the theory became impossible to avoid. After filling a notebook with lists of surnames that she thought sounded bold (Fairstone, Stronghill, Silverfield), she submitted a petition with the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County, changing her name to Mackenzie Fierceton. After you talked to the school. After the caseworkers visit, Mackenzie was on high alert, trying not to set anyone or anything off, she wrote in her diary. All rights reserved. The number of first-generation students on campus became a new benchmark, a sign that a university was fulfilling its social contract. Instead, she gave through the lightly regulated vehicles known as donor-advised funds, which meant she could make massive, tax-deductible donations with no transparency requirements. A month later, the Rhodes Trust informed Mackenzie that it was launching an investigation into her personal history. She said that she was usually glad not to have to line edit for a living anymore. Ms. Scott found herself juggling waiting tables and writing, staying for a stint in the New York City apartment belonging to the family of her friend from Hotchkiss, Ms. Bass. They had a baby boy at 16 and then got Their gift was incredibly consequential, said Zach Silk, campaign manager of Washington United for Marriage, completely changing the scale of what had been a pretty scrappy but somewhat underfunded effort. A stockbroker tried to phone Mr. Tuttles company in November 1987 and was told that the family was in Europe for the month, according to the S.E.C. We had never talked about her being mentally ill. Webb had hoped that the elementary school would rally around Mackenzie. Ruderman acknowledged that Mackenzie didnt use those exact words, but she said that Mackenzie did describe herself as an F.G.L.I. It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out sophomore year.. She had been hospitalized for four days at St.Lukes, where her mother worked. I am grieving the idea of herthe idea I had once created for her., Mackenzie told me that, in the past year, shes experienced a state of self-doubt that she hadnt known since high school: There have been moments of almost panic where I am just cognitively questioning myself, like, Did I misremember something? 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